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UR DEBT 

I •; ) 

GREAT BRITAIN 



By 



AUL REVERE FROTHINGHAM 



Our Debt to Great Britain 



By 

PAUL REVERE FROTHINGHAM 



"I am debtor both to the Greeks-, 
* * and to the barbarians, both to the 

wise and to the unwise." 




THE BEACON PRESS 
25 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 



*7 



Our Debt to Great Britain 

WHEN the great Apostle confessed himself a 
debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, 
both to the wise and to the unwise, we may be sure that 
he had not reached such a conclusion without a struggle. 
There were many deeply-seated and inherited prejudices 
that had to be overcome. It is equally certain, too, that 
his acknowledgment of international indebtedness was 
not acceptable to the rank and file of his fellow-citizens. 
The ancient Jews were a very proud and independent 
people. Their mission in the world, as they conceived 
it, was to teach, not learn; to impart and not receive! 
They belonged to what they called the "Chosen Race." 
In their opinion they had been selected by their God 
to enlighten and redeem the world. They spoke of the 
land they lived in as the Land of Promise, which was 
another way of saying that it was "God's own country." 
Now, the great Apostle inherited these opinions. 
They had been taught him in the schools. He had 
boasted of them in his youth. But, with growing 
years, he had a widening experience. He traveled. 
He saw something of other civilizations. He learned 
the beauty that was Greece; he perceived the grandeur 
that belonged to Rome. In his missionary journeys 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

he came to have an appreciation of the rugged virtues 
that ennobled the barbarians, as they were called, of 
Asia Minor. Out of the dark pit of his prejudices 
and provincialism he climbed up into the sunlight of a 
citizenship of the world! Taught by hard experience, 
enlightened by long intercourse with other lands, he 
learned how much his country and his people owed to 
sister civilizations that lay beyond the sea. "I am 
debtor," he acknowledged, "both to the Greeks and 
the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise." 

Our national education here in America, in the 
course of the past four years, has been perfected along 
lines that are not dissimilar. We have been brought 
to a recognition of our deep indebtedness to others. 
We have learned to look in a different way upon France 
and Italy, upon Belgium and Great Britain. We 
recognize how much we owe them. Our present safety 
is due to their unswerving loyalty to high ideals. The 
stupendous victory, in which we have had the privilege 
of taking part, we owe to their unconquerable courage, 
their dogged perseverance, their rock-like, long re- 
sistance, both at home and in the field. We are 
debtors to them all — and they to us, as they cheer- 
fully and gratefully acknowledge. 

But today,* we are asked to pay particular attention 
to our indebtedness to the people of Great Britain. 
And we ought to do so with the greater gladness. 
For they and we are kin. We speak the same lan- 
guage: we share the same inheritance of liberty and 
law! In a sense, it is a reproach to our intelligence 

*Britain's Day in the United States, observed in more than a thousand cities 
and towns. 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

and sense of fairness that we have to be called upon to 
emphasize our debt. It ought to be evident to all. 
And, what is more, it ought to be reverently recognized 
and thankfully expressed by all. With the obvious 
reasons why in certain sections of our country it has 
not been generously and cheerfully acknowledged, I 
have neither the patience not the desire to deal. Liv- 
ing in the shadow of Bunker Hill and in close proximity 
to Lexington and Concord, we find one of these reasons, 
which is as puerile as it is provincial. The fact of 
the Irish element in our population is another! And 
into the intricacies of the Irish situation God forbid 
that I should enter! When a people are unable to 
agree among themselves upon the management of 
their own affairs; when they use the greatest crisis in 
all history for treasonable trafficking with the most 
corrupt and cruel enemy that the modern world has 
known, they have forfeited the right to be listened to 
with patience. 

Putting aside, therefore, such obvious and unworthy 
reasons as these for whatever failure there may be to 
recognize our obligation, let me call a moment's at- 
tention to a reason that is not so obvious. It is the 
fact that the British themselves have seemed to make 
light of what they have achieved. Far from boasting 
of their exploits, and claiming, — which, of course, is a 
fact, — that without their fleet the war could never have 
been won, they have persistently referred to themselves 
as merely "doing their bit." 

There is, you know, some subtle connection in this 
world between character and surroundings; between 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

temperament and environment, soul and circumstance. 
In ways that we are often not aware of, we are in- 
fluenced by climate, soil, and scenery. The atmosphere 
of the East has produced the dreamy, meditative 
mind. In the West, the climate makes man restless, 
energetic, full of enterprise. Perhaps some of the 
differences between Americans and the English can be 
explained upon this basis. We Americans live in a 
big country, and we talk big! We are not given to 
hiding our light under a bushel. We have no wish to 
conceal the cities of our accomplishments that are 
set upon a hill. We boast freely, build rapidly, boom 
whatever is American. 

England, however, is a little land, and its people 
have a curious tendency to minimize correspondingly 
their greatness! They never boast. They make light 
of great achievements, and pass off heroic acts of sacri- 
fice as part of the day's necessary work! It is "doing 
one's bit", — that is all. And "doing one's bit" may 
mean laying down one's life for a friend, or sailing into 
Zeebrugge under a storm of fire when death is almost 
certain! 

Why don't they speak of "doing one's best," we won- 
der, which is more what we should say, and would seem 
to describe things better? But, to speak of doing one's 
best would savor, to the English mind, of Cant! It 
would smack of talk on Sundays, not on week-days; it 
would suggest the school, and not the world. Besides, — 
when measured by the mighty forces and the tremen- 
dous issues, which come to be at stake, — the individual 
act of greatest sacrifice is no more than a "bit." 

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Here is an instance, which is told by Coningsby 
Dawson. In the early days of the war, on the Flanders 
front, "during a fierce engagement, a British officer 
saw a German officer impaled on the barbed wire, 
writhing in anguish. The fire was dreadful, yet he 
still hung there unscathed. At length, the British 
officer could stand it no longer. He said, quietly: 
T can't bear to look at that poor chap any longer.' 
So he went out under the hail of shell, released him, 
took him on his shoulders, and carried him to the 
German trench. The firing ceased. Both sides 
watched the act with wonder. Then the commander 
in the German trench came forward, took from his 
own bosom the Iron Cross, and pinned it on the breast 
of the British officer." Such an act was true to the 
holiest ideals of chivalry; but it was onlv "doing one's 
bit." 

Now, when individuals, and a whole nation, thus 
characterize a deed of extraordinary heroism, they 
give evidence, among other things, of the long years 
of their existence, and of a great tradition through a 
glorious past! In our days of youth we boast; but the 
deeds of maturity are just a part of life. It is left 
to others both to admire and to praise. 

Let us speak, however, in some detail of the measure 
of our indebtedness to England. In the first place, we 
owe her a big debt for what she did in the days before 
the war broke out in struggling to preserve the peace. 
In the stress of fearful struggle we have tended to 
forget those early days. But now our minds go back 
to them. We have time to remember. When the 



OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

storm-clouds were gathering on the Balkan horizon, 
Italy and France did little to avert the tempest. Our 
own Administration at Washington put forth no 
vigorous, well-timed efforts to stay the lightening 
and the thunder. But the Government of Britain, 
through the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was inde- 
fatigable in working, toiling, planning for the main- 
tenance of peace! Sir Edward Grey, who had earned 
for himself in other crises the title of the "Peacemaker 
of Europe," left no stone unturned to stay the strife, 
lie was instant on the field with suggestions for medi- 
ation: and he did not leave it, sad and broken, till the 
unwavering will of Germany for war was clear. 

"On the day of the presentation of the Austrian note 
he proposed the co-operation of the four Powers — 
Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain, in favor 
of moderation at Vienna and St. Petersburg; and 
when the Austrians rejected the Servian reply he took 
the important step of proposing that the French, 
Italian and German Ambassadors should meet him in 
conference immediately 'for the purpose of discovering 
an issue which would prevent complications.' ' He was 
successful at last in getting Austria to consent to ar- 
bitration, when Germany suddenly drew the sword 
and thus made clear her sinister design. 

We now know that the war was inevitable; that the 
Hun desired it, and plotted for it! But, we should not 
have come to know it as early and as clearly as we did 
except for the beneficent and Christian efforts that 
were made through Sir Edward Grey for peace. We 
ought to be eternally grateful to that noble and high- 

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minded statesman, and to the country which he repre- 
sented, that none of us in looking back can say: — 
"It might have been avoided. If this, or that, had 
only been suggested, the storm would never probably 
have burst!" "The saddest day of my life," Lord Grey 
declared that it was, when his well-meant efforts finally 
were frustrated. And his sadness, as we know, was 
shared by others. When the Cabinet finally decided 
upon war, more than one of the members, we were told, 
broke down and cried like a little child, among them Mr. 
Asquith, who was then Prime Minister. 

It is good, as we look back now, to remember things 
like these. For nothing would have been the same 
if England's effort to preserve the peace had not at once 
and publicly unmasked the will of Germany for war. 

Again, we owe a debt to England for the emphasis 
she laid at once on what was right. She came out flat 
and fair and firm, and took her stand upon the moral 
law! Someone has said that "of all the assets which 
England through the centuries has possessed in dealing 
with Europe and the world, the most priceless has been 
this — that the word of England is the bond of England." 
You remember the "infamous proposal" that was 
made to her by German}^. England was to stand aside 
while France was being crushed, the promise being 
given that no French territory would be permanently 
held. She was to offer no objection to the violation 
of Belgian neutrality, it being solemnly agreed by 
Germany that when the war ended Belgian integrity 
would be respected if she offered no resistance. And, 
on the basis of these two bargains, it was suggested 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

that good relations could permanently be established 
between the two great countries. 

What the whole thing simmered down to, as Chester- 
ton remarked, was this: — "Germany came to England 
and said, 'if you will break your promise in the hope of 
helping me to break my promise, I will reward you with 
another of my celebrated promises/ ' We can not be 
too thankful that England instantly and scornfully 
refused the utterly dishonorable terms! The world 
is in her debt for terming it at once and proclaiming it 
an "infamous proposal" and for saying, as she did, 
that "it would be a disgrace for her, to make the bar- 
gain — a disgrace from which the good name of the 
country never would recover." 

At the very outset, therefore, England took her stand 
upon the moral law, and international integrity, and 
the keeping of one's word! A promise was a promise! 
She was pledged to stand by Belgium — and stand by 
her she would! She plunged into the war. therefore, 
a united nation, with the sense of justice to sustain the 
people and the consciousness of rectitude to keep them 
firm. She nailed God's colors to the mast of every 
ship in her majestic navy, and she sent her little army 
on the instant into France, pitiably weak in numbers, 
but unconquerably strong by reason of the justice of 
the cause. It was a moral appeal that went ringing 
through the land, and brought volunteers by millions 
from offices and factories and great estates — from the 
homes of rich and poor alike, to go and die if necessary 
that honor might not vanish from the world! It was 
the same appeal, a mighty moral issue, that reached 

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across the seas and set the consciences of the colonists 
aflame in Canada, Australia and in far New Zealand, 
India and even in South Africa, till the far-flung empire 
was a unit, and a great crusade was entered on at once! 
Self-interest could not have accomplished it; mere 
motives of defence could not possibly have wrought 
the miracle. It was the greatest instance that the 
world has ever witnessed of the power of a noble and 
a high Ideal. There are two kinds of war, it has been 
very truly said. There is the war that the ruffian 
wages, when he rushes from concealment to assault 
a defenceless woman; and there is the kind that the 
man wages who hurries to defend her. Great Britain 
recognized the difference, and the world is in her debt 
for acting on it with supreme and instant resolution. 
Again, I think we are indebted to her for the calm 
forbearance that she exercised all through our own long 
period of waiting. She did not blame us, nor utter 
stern reproaches. Whatever she may have felt, she 
kept her feelings to herself. Indeed, she used conscious 
efforts to understand our hesitancy, and excuse it. 
She went so far even as to say, through the mouths 
of public men and scholars, that under similar circum- 
stances she would probably have done the same herself. 
Less than six months before we made the great decision, 
a thoughtful and distinguished Englishman, a scholar 
and a university professor, Gilbert Murray, endeavored 
to explain America's attitude, and tried to justify it. 
''What nation in history," he asked his countrymen, 
ever did fight for motives of pure philanthropy and 
sympathy, in a war four thousand miles away? It is 



OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

not for us," he added, "to expect it, nor to blame 
Americans if they do not draw the sword." 

But the joy of the English when we took the unpre- 
cedented step, — when we did what no other nation ever 
had done — is evidence of how great the forbearance 
was that had been exercised! Nothing could possibly 
have exceeded the warmth of their welcome, nor the 
great whole-hearted way in which they have given 
praise to the instant assistance of our sailors and the 
incomparable bravery of our soldiers. 

But we pass to the greatest and most obvious debt of 
all, our indebtedness to England's Navy! Where 
should we have been without it, and where would the 
entire world have been? We remember those long and 
silent watches in the cold and dark North Sea: we 
recall that barrier of might which was sleepless in its 
watchfulness for more than four long weary years. 
The barrier was never seriously threatened, and it was 
seldom seen or heard from. But there it lay, so great 
a terror that the foe was kept in hiding. Some of us 
can remember the fears that used to come with waking 
thoughts when we let ourselves wonder whether the 
obstacle might somehow, suddenly, be battered down 
and sunk beneath the waves. But the dreaded mo- 
ment never came; and instead there came the great 
surrender which was vastly more humiliating to the 
foe than defeat in a mighty battle that the English 
had so hoped for. Some of the boys from our church 
were there on American warships when that "Ren- 
dezvous of Shame" for Germany took place; and we 
have reason to thank God that the Navy of Great 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

Britain, strengthened by our own Navy, was so strong 
that final success at sea was won without the loss of 
human life. 

And when we speak of the debt we owe to England for 
her power on the sea, we must not forget the portion 
of that power which came from her mercantile marine. 
High as we rank the valor of her navy, I think for myself 
that I place as high, or higher, the courage and devo- 
tion of her common seamen and her merchant captains 
who fought incessantly the treacherous submarines, 
and crossed and re-crossed oceans which at any mo- 
ment might engulf them! Yet they never wavered; 
they took their lives into their hands, and did not fail 
in coming up to what Nelson long ago declared the 
nation expected! A year ago, in England, when the 
submarine menace was greatest and most terrifying, it 
was stated in the House of Commons that as yet not a 
single instance had been heard of in which a British 
seaman had refused to sail. We owe to them a mighty 
debt for that! And when we congratulate ourselves on 
the two million men and more that we sent abroad, 
let us not forget that more than a million of them were 
"transported for us in British vessels, and convoyed 
by British warships." 

And what shall we say, — what can we say of that 
larger measure of indebtedness which belongs to, and 
is symbolized forever by, those million dead who 
sleep forever and so well beneath the fields of France, 
in the sandy soil of grim Gallipoli, in Egypt, Syria, 
Palestine and far-off Mesopotamia. The places where 



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they lie form henceforth but a part of England; and the 
soil is richer for the dust that lies there. 

"For you, the dead beyond the sea, 
Who gave your lives to hold us free, 

By us, who keep your memory, 
What can be said? 

We can not sing your praises right, 

Lost heroes of the endless fight; 
Whose souls into the lonely night, 

Too soon have fled. 

We can but honor, cherish, bless 

Your sacred names; — no words express 

The measure of our thankfulness, 
To you the dead." 

There are some things which the heart makes no 
attempt to utter. It is hopeless to find words. We 
can only bow the head, and lift lame hands, and breathe 
a prayer. But the deep heart of America will not for- 
get the mighty sorrow English mothers, fathers, wives 
and sisters know; and it has not failed to take example 
of the bright, brave, sturdy way in which that over- 
whelming sorrow has been met and borne. We have 
suffered little in comparison. Our dead, as we measure 
them with theirs, are but a scattered few. The British 
lost sometimes in a single fortnight as many as we have 
had to sacrifice in the entire war. The names in- 
scribed upon the Rolls of Honor in their Universities 
and other institutions mount into the thousands, while 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

with us it is a matter of mere scores, or hundreds. The 
shining armor of America bears only a few stains, while 
Britain's armor is all red with the heart's blood of her 
bravest and her best. Yet her loss, we are well aware 
is ours, too! For who knows what those youthful 
heroes might have given to the world? Our literature 
might have been enriched by them; our science added 
to; our progress in the arts advanced; our religious 
knowledge deepened. So her loss must be also reck- 
oned ours, and we ask the privilege today of clasping 
hands with our kin across the sea. "Your loss," we 
say to them, "is America's as well; we suffer with 
you, and we wish that we might make the load you bear 
in some way lighter." 

And what shall we say of the debt we owe the living, 
— those who fought and did not fall; those who served 
and did not have to make the ultimate sacrifice; those 
who craved death, but are permanently crippled; those 
who saw the bright sun as they crossed to France, but 
who came back blinded; those who worked and toiled 
at home, and found no kind of toil too menial if it helped 
in any way the cause! How the people of England 
worked, and more especially the women! No Britain's 
day would be complete which did not pay some special 
tribute to the part which England's women played. 
Women in factories; women in munition works; women 
in hospitals; women in army huts; high-born women 
scrubbing Red Cross floors, and bidding for the privi- 
lege of doing so! In all the great book of the war there 
is no brighter chapter than the one which tells of 
woman's part. 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

"Strange, that in this great hour, when righteousness 
Has won her war upon hypocrisy, 
That some there be, who, lost in littleness. 
And mindful of an ancient grudge, can ask; 
'Now, what has England done to win this war?' 
We think we see her smile that English smile, 
And shrug a lazy shoulder, and just smile! 
It were so little worth her while to pause 
In her stupendous task to make reply. 
What has she done? No need to ask! 
Upon the fields of Flanders and of France 
A million crosses mark a million graves. 
And, ah, her women! On that peaceful isle, 
Where in the hawthorne hedges thrushes sang, 
And meadow-larks made gay the scented air, 
Now blackened chimneys rear their grimy heads 
Smoke-belching, and the frightened birds have fled 
Before the thunder of the whirring wheels. 
Behind unlovely walls, amid the din, 
Seven times a million noble women toiled 
Nor dreamed that they have played a hero's part. 
Ah, what has England done? When came the call 
She counted not the cost, but gave her all." 

All this is now a matter of the past. It belongs to 
history. But I can not close without a word that 
concerns the future. What has been is secure! What 
is to be, our hands have yet to shape. And pray God 
that our hands in shaping it may work together! Those 
whom God in war has joined together, let not man in 
peace hereafter put asunder! 

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OUR DEBT TO GREAT BRITAIN 

We owe it still to England that she is ready now, in 
the hour of Victory, to join us in a League of Nations! 
Her great men have declared their willingness — , 
Lloyd George, Balfour, Viscount Grey, and our faithful 
never-failing friend Lord Bryce. England with America 
and France and Italy and other nations that are free, 
can keep the great Alliance that exists, and keep it 
for the future peace and happy progress of the world! 

England, I repeat, is ready! And, what is more, it 
would seem that for many years she has been ready, 
and has looked with longing for some kind of an al- 
liance! When the last great Laureate of England 
died, he left behind some unpublished stanzas. They 
were addressed to America, and contained a prophecy 
and hope which have nobly been fulfilled. 

How many of us, I wonder, are familiar with these 
words of Tennyson: 

"Gigantic daughter of the West, 

We drink to thee across the flood, 

We know thee most, we love thee best 

For art thou not of British blood? 

Should war's mad blast again be blown 
Permit not thou the tyrant powers 

To fight thy Mother here alone, 

But let thy broadsides roar with ours. 

O rise, our strong Atlantic sons, 

When war against our freedom springs! 

O speak to Europe through your guns: 
They can be understood by Kings." 

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We have done as Tennyson desired. The poet's 
vision has been gloriously fulfilled. And now may the 
statesman's dream come also true! If we are true to 
our ideals, if we are not false to the very name we bear 
of the United States, we will rise to the glorious op- 
portunity that God in his infinite mercy now presents 
to us! It is America's mission to make clear to the 
world how the many may be one; how sovereign states 
may maintain their sovereignty and yet establish an 
indissoluble union! What has proved to be possible 
upon a continent may yet be wrought out on the 
planet. Let all provincial voices of objection be shamed 
into silence. Let whatever difficulties may arise be 
overcome by the victorious and enlightened Children 
of the Allies as similar difficulties were overcome a 
century and more ago by the enlightened and vic- 
torious Fathers of our great Republic. Let inter- 
dependence come to crown the facts of independence! 
For then we shall realize the Commonwealth of Man, 
the Federation of the World! 



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